Our Student Reps are the Best!

Cheers to all of our English student reps from Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 for being such great leaders and putting on such fun events for your fellow study abroad peers! Here’s some pictures of all the things they did this past year, and a reflection from UCL rep Delaney Lepak!

This spring, I was the student representative for UCL from the University of California Education Abroad Program. As student rep, I planned two events for students attending UCL from the UC system under a set budget. My first event was “Cake with Californians” where we went to the Hummingbird Café and ate cake and cupcakes together. The second event was “Bowling at Bloomsbury” where we bowled for two hours and shared lots of fries, memories, and a 26” pizza!

Planning the events was a great experience to learn how to manage a budget, but more importantly it was so fun and rewarding to bring everyone together. While studying abroad is an AMAZING way to meet many people of different cultures, it was fun to reconnect with Californians that share a similar background, because sometimes people can get homesick. Being student rep made it more possible for people to feel comfortable reaching out to me as well as immerse myself in a community abroad. I would highly recommend applying to be a student rep, but regardless of if you feel that being a student representative is something you would be interested in doing, I highly encourage people to study abroad in general.

I had the best time being UCL’s student rep, but I do not think that my job is over. My goal is to continue to help prospective study abroad students and address any questions or concerns that they may have about studying abroad. If you are a student interested in studying abroad, please feel welcome to email me at lepakd@berkeley.edu.

I am so thankful for my abroad experience and would encourage everyone firstly to study abroad and secondly to become a student rep and immerse yourself in your host university abroad.